Fuelled by growing notebook consumption, personal computer sales has crossed 7.3 million units in FY08, a 16 per cent increase over last year, according to a MAIT study. An industry performance review by Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT), the apex body representing India’s IT hardware sector, projected the PC sales to touch up to 8.5 million units in FY09. While releasing the study, MAIT Executive Director Vinnie Mehta said, ”the overall consumption in the PC market was led by telecom, banking and financial service sectors, education and BPO/IT-enabled services, and the e-governance initiatives of the Union and the State Governments.” The southward trend in pricing for all IT products continued during the year due to technology advancements and competition.

Notebook sales grew by 114 per cent to 18,22,139 units during FY08 as compared to 8,50,860 units last year, the study said. Desktop sales increased a mere one per cent to 55,22,167 units during 2007-08 from 54,90,591 units a year ago. Notebooks now account for a quarter of the total PC market in the country, up from less than three per cent four years ago–a clear indication of consumer preference towards mobility. Households accounted for 44 per cent of the market growing 150 per cent; while business accounted for 56 per cent of the market growing 93 per cent.

Mr Vinnie Mehta, said.

Almost three-fourth of the notebook consumption happened outside the top metros. Driving the consumption are factors like drop in entry level notebook price-points and mobility,” MAIT Executive Director,

Multinational brands accounted for 45 per cent of the total desktop market in 2007-08 (compared to 39 per cent share last year). The proportion of Indian brands fell from 23 per cent to 22 per cent. The share of assembled desktops and unbranded systems also shrunk to 33 per cent of the total desktop sales (38 per cent in FY07).

The number of active Internet entities (establishments or individuals with Internet connection) increased to 7.2 million subscriptions by March 2008, while the figure was six million units on March 2007. With this, the Internet users exceed 52 million.

Computer makers are feeling the heat and what else to blame but inflation and weak enterprise demand. Even as PC prices were hiked last month, a good monsoon may again boost demand and ease prices. The flat growth in Desktops has been attributed to inflation and flat IT budgets, which have stagnated due to US slowdown and less demand from some sectors. Overall, there has been a rise in unit sales but a decline in revenues by 2%. This is because the average cost of a desktop PC fell from Rs 19,000 to Rs 18,500. Notebook sales, however, grew at 114%. PC prices increased by 5-10% last month. Transport costs have also increased due to a rise in crude prices. About 70% of PC components are imported and hence increase in transport costs impacts the cost of a PC. In future, companies may play the price game carefully. Companies, which want to increase market share at the cost of profitability, may not increase prices in the short term.

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Microsoft bundled a new writing assistance tool in their Live Search.ESL (English as a Second Language) Assistant currently noting  more then a prototype and ESL currently focusing on limited number of mistakes

The ESL Assistant uses statistical models to suggest corrections for a number of common learner error patterns that are not currently supported by the proofing tools in Microsoft Office products. The service also tries to help users judge whether a suggestion truly represents an improvement by showing real-life examples returned by a web search

ESL Assistant deploys advanced statistical models in order to address and correct uncharacteristic mistakes. At the same time, the tool is intimately connected to Live Search, and each suggestion is also performed as a search in order to offer the user conclusive examples after the error is corrected. Additionally, Microsoft is intent on offering the tool as an add-in for the Office 2007 System, in an effort to make up for the limitations of the grammar checker.

In its present form, the service is unapologetically experimental (‘pre-alpha,’ despite the beta label). The range of error types that it corrects is still small, it does not capture everything, and it sometimes gets things wrong. Work to improve error detection accuracy and coverage is ongoing; we expect to roll out new modules and updates as the service matures. The present interface certainly does not represent what one would expect to see if this service were some day fully integrated into a shipping product. With the current prototype, we will be gathering data about where the service succeeds and where it does not, to help inform future directions of development

Some features of the ESL Assistant service include:

• Corrections for common ESL error types found in non-native English writing but not supported in by the Office grammar checker. More information about the specific kinds of error patterns that are supported can be found in the ESL Assistant Help (FAQ) page and on the team website. 

• Implementation as a web service, which permits the deployment of huge statistical models to identify possible error locations.

• Automatically generated searches to assist users by retrieving real-world contextual examples from the web.

• A downloadable add-in for Outlook 2007, allowing mail text to besent to the ESL Assistant web site for checking.

• An inline thesaurus feature that proposes alternative words appropriate to the context.

• An initial pass though Microsoft Office grammar and spell checking, that can be turned on by a checkbox, to ensure more comprehensive error coverage.

• Localized pages for users in the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian markets (or if you set your default language in IE to one of these).

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For a teenage boy, being told you must choose between your love of football and talent in tennis would seem agonising - but Rafael Nadal has no reason to regret his choice.

The 22-year-old, born June 3 1986, was a gifted striker but his sacrifice of one game has paid off in another eight years on. His marathon match against Roger Federer on Sunday, which saw him become Wimbledon mens’ champion for the first time, is just his latest feat in the tennis world.

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A new study released by Net Applications shows that Microsoft Internet Explorer loosing it’s market shares. Last year internet Explorer has approximately 79% browser market share and after one year it only has 73% of browser market share. Mozilla’s Firefox is Internet Explorer’s main competitor. The web browser now holds 19 percent of the market, and is rapidly expanding the number of people that are using it. Over the last year, Firefox’s market share raised more than 4 percent, from the 14.65 percent it owned last summer. The browser’s latest version acquired 1 percent of the global market during the first day of its release.

The bad news for Mozilla is that the main people who downloaded Firefox 3 where users upgrading from Firefox 2. Even though the company’s latest version of the browser has managed to get about 4 percent of the web browser market, only less than 1 percent have been people that previously used other companies’ products.

Apple also hit the jackpot with Safari, increasing the number of people that use it from 4.71 percent last year, to 6.31 as of this month. The reason for this seems to be the increased popularity of the company’s products, and the fact that each Apple computer comes with Safari

Browser Market Share July 2007

Browser Market Share June 2008

Source : Market Share and efluxmedia

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer,Firefox

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Cell phones and PDAs are now become the integral part of our life. Before buying to any Cell phone or PDA devices these can be deciding factors while choosing your favorite Cell phone or PDA.

Size and Weight : Cell phones and PDA’s are meant for mobile users and they must fit into your pocket. Business users need a full keyboard otherwise most users need a device that is small and fit into their hands.

Performance: If you are using your Cell phone or PDA for downloading and running application the you need a phone that had a good processing power. Performance is key factor in PDA’s because they run multiple applications. Phones come with 500Mhz processor are good enough for most mobile applications.

Operating System: Currently Windows Mobile and Symbian are the most widely available operating system in mobile devices, apart from these two operating system different manufacturers using different operating system and their are some proprietary mobile operating systems are also present in the market. The cost of Mobile phone is also depends upon’s the  type of operating system like Microsoft charge $12 to $14 for per mobile while Symbian charge only $4 to $6 per mobile phone.

Connectivity: A mobile device capable of connecting other devices or computers using Bluetooth and WiFi is good for sharing and synchronizing mobile device with other devices. Bluetooth or WiFi can also be used to connect to Internet. Bluetooth is widely used protocol not only for connecting devices as well as accessories. WiFi is not popular as compare to Bluetooth, WiFi can be used to stream audio and video files. WiFi is very useful when you don’t have GPRS connection at that your WiFi enabled devices can surf you internet in WiFi zone.

Input: Touch screen may not be as useful as keyboard. When it comes to playing games keyboard gives better experience as compare to touch screen mobile phones. While buying a keyboard enabled mobile phone make sure that all keyboard buttons have right feel.

Batteries: Battery with larger capacity is always good for mobile phones because it will keep your mobile phone powered for longer period of time. You can also look for batteries that can be charged through USB devices. Also check the battery claimed life and battery talk time.

Memory: Most mobile phones gives support for additional memory support. SD is the most cheapest and widely available kind of memory. Some mobile phone manufactures only support their own proprietary type of memory. These memory can be costlier then SD memory.

Signal Quality: Mobile phone should have a good reception because mobile phones are used for making and receiving phone calls. Check the phone signal performance inside a building as well as in outdoors. very few people check the signal quality of mobile phones.

There can be some other points also consider before buying the Mobile phone.

• Camera.

• GPS

• Sound Quality

• Design and Style

• Audio Playback, FM Support and Music Support

• Third Part software support

• Warranty

Technorati Tags: Mobile Phone,PDA

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Well now most of you might be thinking has this guy gone nuts!!! Why would any sane person on this planet want the price of a commodity like petrol to increase? Petrol has become an essential part of our everyday life, has its cost not already increased to an unbearable level. But let us delve into this a little bit further. Now why exactly has the price of petrol increased? Is not the price of petrol decided by the government? And why would the UPA want to increase the price of petrol in an election year and that too when inflation is already touching new highs almost every coming week. And it’s common knowledge that inflation has brought down a many strong Indian Governments in the past. One possible reason if you are still unaware of it is that we in India don’t produce a lot of Oil like the Gulf Countries. To be more precise we buy more than 70% of our oil from foreign countries, mostly OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, UAE etc.

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WordPress is really easy to use blogging platform and key thing with WordPress is that their are a lot of Plugin’s are available but adding banner ads in WordPress blog is very tricky job. Max Banner Ads Plugin helps WordPress users to display banner ads anywhere in their posts.

Watch Video Demo

How to use Max Banner Ads Plugin

ReadersZone showing Banner ad for the developer of this Plugin

Step 1: Choose where in the blog you want your banner to be shown. Right now we choose it at the top.

Step 2: Add your banner at the place you just chose in step 1.

Step 3:Save.

Max Banner Ads Plugin Features

• Add banners almost anywhere in your blog.

• Rotate as many banners as you want.

• Upload banner images from your local computer, the web, or directly link it to from another site.

• Track banner impressions and banner clicks.

• Insert banners into the top or bottom of your blog, any way you like.

• Insert banners in sidebars as widgets.

• Insert banners in any post you like, any way you like.

• Group banners in different zones

• Defeat ad blindness by showing ads at different location every time a page is loaded

Note Before Downloading

This Plugin is released as Reviewware. That means you can download and use it for free and if you find it useful then you have to write a review post for this Plugin in your blog. This will help lots of other people know about the Plugin and get benefited by it.
By the way, if for any reason you don’t want to write a review post then it’s ok as well. You can download the Plugin and use it as a gift from us. No obligation. We will be much happy if you find out some other ways to spread the word for this Plugin.

Download Max Banner Ads Plugin

Technorati Tags: Banner Ad Plugin

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On July 2, 2008 Microsoft announced that it will release an all-in-one software subscription package Microsoft Equipt offers consumers Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, Windows Live tools and Office Live Workspace. Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions. This is the first time when Microsoft come with the concept of of Software as Service. Now Let’s compare both Google services and Microsoft Equipt.

Email and Online Storage: Both Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail offers a sufficient amount of storage. Both E-Mail services are easy to use and have most of the features common in each other. Gmail offers online storage via it’s E-Mail service while Microsoft offers online storage service via it’s SkyDrive service. So while using Google you get around 5 GB of online Storage but with Microsoft services users get 5 GB Storage for E-Mail and 5 GB online storage space.

Office Applications: Google offers office application through it’s GoogleDocs and Microsoft with it’s Microsoft Office Suite. Microsoft Office suite has more features as compare to Google docs but collaboration is missing in Microsoft office. Google docs offers only basic functions but  GoogleDocs collaboration features is best as compare to Microsoft office. Microsoft Office Live adds some collaboration but the online editing feature is missing and GoogleDocs offers a better services here.

Security: Google services as of now does not offer any security services and here Microsoft has added it’s OneCare security programs. OneCare offers a number of services like Firewall, Backup, system tuneup and many other services to it’s users.

Price: Google docs and its application yearly subscription for a single employee is cost you around $50. Microsoft Equipt offers it’s all services with just $69.99 per year.Anytime a new version of Office or Windows Live OneCare is released, Microsoft Equipt customers will get the version upgrades as part of their subscriptions.

Download Microsoft Equipt Products and Services Guide

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LinkedIn and Google both are facing problems while keeping customers data private. On July 3, 2008 Google has confirmed that personal data of U.S. employees hired prior to 2006 have been stolen in a recent burglary.  LinkedIn was founded five years ago and provides business networking service. LinkedIn works same as other social networking service first users has to register with LinkedIn and then connect with their friends or can find new friends there.

HR companies sees LinkedIn a source of professional profiles they have to pay some money and they have access to a number of professional profiles. LinkedIn’s new Enterprise Corporate Solution allows access to all LinkedIn members, and there are bout 23 million of them in all. With a simple search, one can find loads of profiles which can then be sent to recruiters and HR companies.

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Pencil A Firefox 3.0 add-on turn your web browser into a complete drawing platform. Pencil installs rich set of tools in browser enabling users to save, load and display external canvas, together with a palette of shapes

The Pencil Project’s unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

Top features:

• Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping

• Multi-page document with background page

• On-screen text editing with rich-text supports

• PNG rasterizing

• Undo/redo supports

• Installing user-defined stencils

• Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…

• Cross-platforms

• Adding external objects

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